Amazon Restaurants • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon Restaurants

#51

Post by ojbyrne » Thu, Dec 15, 2016, 9:19 PM UTC

gthtjtkt wrote: post #19

This is kind of terrifying after hearing so many life-ruining stories about the rash decisions Amazon makes when dealing with 3rd party sellers ([1] from last week, for example). Everyone always says "Don't stake your livelihood on platforms you don't control" (e.g. Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), but what happens when one of those platforms suddenly forces its way into your business? How can a restaurant owner tur…

One difference is that restaurants don't have to rely on delivery only - people still like to go out and eat, so optimizing for that experience can decrease the risk.

Re: Amazon Restaurants

#52

Post by pjlegato » Thu, Dec 15, 2016, 9:19 PM UTC

godzillabrennus wrote: post #37

gthtjtkt wrote: post #19

This is kind of terrifying after hearing so many life-ruining stories about the rash decisions Amazon makes when dealing with 3rd party sellers ([1] from last week, for example). Everyone always says "Don't stake your livelihood on platforms you don't control" (e.g. Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), but what happens when one of those platforms suddenly forces its way into your business? How can a restaurant owner tur…

Is it such a bad thing for society if a business fails when transparency is added to how they conduct their business? Yelp reviews are also intregal to the success of a restaurant and similar complaints are lobbed at them for destroying revenue at small companies. Have you ever gone to a restaurant that is poorly ranked on yelp? I have. They tend to deserve the poor ratings. This is a valuable service to the consumer…

It'd be fine if it were simply transparency, if the companies that get kicked off had all done something legitimately "bad" in some sense.

The problem is that Amazon often doesn't seem to really investigate issues in any depth at all; they just kick the seller off reflexively. It's trivially easy to be kicked off the platform for reasons other than doing something legitimately "bad," such as software error, human error, or even a deliberately orchestrated fraud campaign conducted by your competitor -- and many other sellers don't get kicked off for doing the same thing, or worse. It's all very random.

Re: Amazon Restaurants

#53

Post by MichaelBurge » Thu, Dec 15, 2016, 9:23 PM UTC

godzillabrennus wrote: post #37

gthtjtkt wrote: post #19

This is kind of terrifying after hearing so many life-ruining stories about the rash decisions Amazon makes when dealing with 3rd party sellers ([1] from last week, for example). Everyone always says "Don't stake your livelihood on platforms you don't control" (e.g. Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), but what happens when one of those platforms suddenly forces its way into your business? How can a restaurant owner tur…

Is it such a bad thing for society if a business fails when transparency is added to how they conduct their business? Yelp reviews are also intregal to the success of a restaurant and similar complaints are lobbed at them for destroying revenue at small companies. Have you ever gone to a restaurant that is poorly ranked on yelp? I have. They tend to deserve the poor ratings. This is a valuable service to the consumer…

> Is it such a bad thing for society if a business fails when transparency is added to how they conduct their business?

Yes, because people are poor at dealing with selection bias. A data source with 100% real and true complaints and favorable reviews can tell any story you want it to with the right filtering, so especially in the presence of a malicious adversary you have to completely discard this data from your decision making.

Re: Amazon Restaurants

#54

Post by alogray » Thu, Dec 15, 2016, 9:25 PM UTC

gnopgnip wrote: post #48

gthtjtkt wrote: post #19

This is kind of terrifying after hearing so many life-ruining stories about the rash decisions Amazon makes when dealing with 3rd party sellers ([1] from last week, for example). Everyone always says "Don't stake your livelihood on platforms you don't control" (e.g. Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), but what happens when one of those platforms suddenly forces its way into your business? How can a restaurant owner tur…

You could say the same of yelp, or google. Or a higher end restaurant losing a michelin star. What happens when they get bad reviews and their ranking drops? You can diversify and get traffic from other platforms, work through the platform to either fix the problems, respond to complaints, or just get more reviews.

I think the parent's worry deals with cases like we've seen with Google and other large companies where automated systems sometimes get inappropriately triggered and customer support is either ineffectual or non-existent until the user is able to make a viral stink on social media (think malicious/bad copyright flags on youtube causing channels to get demonetized). With reviews, the restaurant theoretically at least has a reasonable deal of influence in most cases.

Re: Amazon Restaurants

#55

Post by dimino » Thu, Dec 15, 2016, 9:25 PM UTC

gthtjtkt wrote: post #19

This is kind of terrifying after hearing so many life-ruining stories about the rash decisions Amazon makes when dealing with 3rd party sellers ([1] from last week, for example). Everyone always says "Don't stake your livelihood on platforms you don't control" (e.g. Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), but what happens when one of those platforms suddenly forces its way into your business? How can a restaurant owner tur…

> How can a restaurant owner turn them down when all the short-sighted owners nearby are happily signing up?

Sign up for all of the services: OpenTable, Doordash, Amazon Restaurants, GrubHub, Postmates, everything. That way, when one service does something terrible, you aren't crippled by the single point of failure, and as long as it wasn't terrible enough to sever the relationship, you can take your time rectifying the issue.

Re: Amazon Restaurants

#56

Post by pjlegato » Thu, Dec 15, 2016, 9:26 PM UTC

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #32

gthtjtkt wrote: post #19

This is kind of terrifying after hearing so many life-ruining stories about the rash decisions Amazon makes when dealing with 3rd party sellers ([1] from last week, for example). Everyone always says "Don't stake your livelihood on platforms you don't control" (e.g. Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), but what happens when one of those platforms suddenly forces its way into your business? How can a restaurant owner tur…

That story is just...insane. I'm glad I have a separate account for my maybe-one-day-business and one for personal use but still they need to let them talk to a real PERSON before locking out an account like so. I can only imagine what would have happened if he didn't post to a website where it gained traction. If it wasn't upvoted out of reddit's new, would he just be completely screwed? Damn...

It's very disturbing how often we're seeing stories of someone's whole life being ruined due to some trivial error followed by poor / nonexistent customer service at Amazon or Google, and only getting their life back after they 1) plead for assistance from the general public on social media and then 2) happen to luck into getting upvoted rather than buried.

Re: Amazon Restaurants

#57

Post by moron4hire » Thu, Dec 15, 2016, 9:26 PM UTC

godzillabrennus wrote: post #37

gthtjtkt wrote: post #19

This is kind of terrifying after hearing so many life-ruining stories about the rash decisions Amazon makes when dealing with 3rd party sellers ([1] from last week, for example). Everyone always says "Don't stake your livelihood on platforms you don't control" (e.g. Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), but what happens when one of those platforms suddenly forces its way into your business? How can a restaurant owner tur…

Is it such a bad thing for society if a business fails when transparency is added to how they conduct their business? Yelp reviews are also intregal to the success of a restaurant and similar complaints are lobbed at them for destroying revenue at small companies. Have you ever gone to a restaurant that is poorly ranked on yelp? I have. They tend to deserve the poor ratings. This is a valuable service to the consumer…

> Yelp reviews are also intregal to the success of a restaurant

That's really only on the West Coast. People don't live or die by Yelp here on the East Coast. Frankly, I'm always surprised to see people are still using it after all the revelations of extortionist behavior they were engaging in against restaurants.

Re: Amazon Restaurants

#58

Post by harigov » Thu, Dec 15, 2016, 9:27 PM UTC

This is a great opportunity for some restaurants to outsource cooking. Just provide a place for people to sit, eat and chat with some alcohol options. One can order food an hour before arriving and eat at the restaurant. The advantage is that folks can order from any number of cuisines. This can still be cost effective in the long run when kitchens can be bigger and in the outskirts and the premium place in the city is reserved only to sit customers.

Re: Amazon Restaurants

#59

Post by dawnerd » Thu, Dec 15, 2016, 9:27 PM UTC

jsheard wrote: post #30

chrisan wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I had never heard of it before. From the news[1] I saw it was new in a city dear to me. Mods can delete the post, my bad! [1]: http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/business/2016/12/15/...

Your post is currently #2 on the front page... apparently a lot of people had no idea this existed. Amazons marketing people have some explaining to do :)

They REALLY do a bad job pushing prime now. People in my building had no idea they could have amazon products delivered in an hour and at no extra charge besides an (optional) tip. They use the same drivers to deliver some packages from the site as well.

Re: Amazon Restaurants

#60

Post by alphast0rm » Thu, Dec 15, 2016, 9:28 PM UTC

cavisne wrote: post #20

One differentiation with amazon restaurants is at least in my market they don't mark up food prices (like door dash and kindof postmates) and they don't charge for delivery. Uber eats is the best of these I've found, but it's a pain meeting at the curb. Amazon restaurants has by far the worst drivers though, I think compounded by tipping before they deliver, and no ratings system

> Uber eats is the best of these I've found, but it's a pain meeting at the curb.

This is an option, you should be able to select whether you want to meet your courier at the curb for faster food or wait for them to find parking and come to your door.